Politics & Prose & Perfection & (I Hope) Permanence

The Washington Postreports today that Politics & Prose, the extremely wonderful independent bookstore on upper Connecticut Avenue, is for sale.

This is distressing news in all sorts of ways, not least, the Post reports, that one of the reasons for the sale of the place is that Carla Cohen, who co-owns and, in 1984, co-founded it with Barbara Meade, is seriously ill. I hereby send her loving wishes for her well-being.

Whenever an institution having to do with the printed word (e.g., Newsweek, the Washington Star, the Rocky Mountain News, etc., etc, ad nauseam) is put on the auction block, there’s always the fear that it is about to become a memory. I pray this will not be the case with Politics & Prose, an outpost of intellectual and literary vitality that the nation’s capital can ill afford to lose. P&P is not just a place to buy a book or sip an espresso, though I make it a point to do both every time I’m in the vicinity. It’s also the venue for a long-running, often high-end free show: the frequent author evenings in which scribblers give little speeches, answer unusually intelligent questions from members of a usually well-informed audience, and get their egos stroked. I’ve gotten mine stroked there twice, for “Politics” and, last year, for “¡Obamanos!”. I have to admit that the latter wasn’t one of my better performances. I blame Carla. The introduction she gave me was so touching, affectionate, and effusive that I was left, if not technically speechless, flushed and stammering. (Robert McCrum is tonight’s guest. The reliably speechful Christopher Hitchens is tomorrow’s.)

I fervently hope that somebody buys Politics & Prose and that the somebody or somebodies who buy it run it with the hands-on, brains-on, hearts-on personal dedication that its customers have taken for granted from Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade.

Hendrik Hertzberg is a senior editor and staff writer at The New Yorker. He regularly blogs about politics.